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A thousandmiles high, and falling.

Razor loved free fall. He let the peaceful tranquility of high-orbit insertion surround him. It brought him a peculiar kind of zen--the calm before the storm. All the way up here, there was nothing to distract him from the precious gift he brought to the massive orb below him. How lucky they were--to feel the Emporer's will themselves. And how lucky was he--to be the one chosen to bring it.

Adorned around his flight-armor were the implements of the Empire's will. They gleamed in the undiluted light of the nearby sun as he streaked towards... Towards... Razor had to check the display to remember the planet's name again. In the heading of his objectives layout, it read Rebus 6. Rebus--named for the emperor's fourth child--a grand and noble name for a beautiful orb like the one beneath him, studded with islands across a pale-blue sea. It was a gorgeous planet. He felt honored to have been chosen to be the one to take it.

He let himself relax and stay limp. He had the perfect velocity and aerial attitude for atmospheric insertion, so there was nothing to do except run his diagnostics and enjoy the peaceful floating sensation. One by one his systems checked in with green lights. Five-by-five, ready to go. A confirmation request chirped on his comms, and he answered. Mission is a go. Razor is falling.

Oh yes, Razor loved free fall. He loved the way he could point his head down and watch the curved rim of the planet grow around him. He loved the feeling of motionlessness, even though the altimeter in his heads-up display was screaming down the meters to impact. He even loved the way comms-chatter warped and warbled as he passed through the planet's magnetic boundaries. But most of all, he loved the big bang at the end.

*

The capital city of Rebus sat on the coast of the world's largest island. It was lushly vegitated, overgrown with green so thick that on first glance the towering skyscrapers could almost be gigantic trees. Between them swung elegant skyways, white and glittering in sunlight that gave the tropical paradise an enticing glow. One could traverse the capital from shining city center to quiet suburb without ever even touching the ground.

But to not touch the ground was to forgo the capital's most enticing qualities--beaches that curved away from the sparkling metropolis in an endless procession of luxury and beauty. Diminutive robots skittered through the air above, descending only to whisk away flotsam and litter that would otherwise mar the pearly sand. Up close, the waters of the global ocean were clear and clean. You could see the sandy floor down ten meters or more when swimming. But from a distance, the waters were a deep jade, colored with the local flora that had made the planet's air so fresh to breathe.

The native inhabitants of Rebus were scattered across the capital in clumps, packed shoulder-to-shoulder here where commercial district offered fashion that was so-so hot, while promising that prices were so-so low, and there where the latest tri-vids were being shown (imported fresh from the best studios that Rebus had to offer). They dotted across the beaches in little white and tan lumps, sprawled out to absorb the sun's heat. They scampered when they moved, over-long legs bouncing their plump bodies and making their ponderous ears flop. Rabbits and hares of all description populated the world's capital--along with a majority of Rebus' countless islands. Labor had long since become a relic of a worse age. Instead, their robotic hordes lifted and built and cleaned and served in every capacity, leaving the native Rebans to long lives of luxury.

But while their robotic servitors could do the work, it was still left to the Rebans to think. They were poets and scientists, philosophers and--of most importance today--politicians. Important today, because negotiations had broken down.

Deep in the heart of the sky-high cultural center, the collection of the Quorum sat nervously. There were hundreds of them--one each for the inhabited islands. They sat and fidgeted, curious noses causing whiskers to twitch, and ears held high and attentive as the Representative of the Empire spoke.

"It is a small price to pay for inclusion, do you not agree?" The speaker was a hulking tiger. When he spoke, his voice carried a rumbling undertone that was half purr and half growl. He dwarfed the podium he'd been given to speak at. For a native Reban, their shoulders and head would sit above the podium's smoothly curved glass top. For the tiger, it barely came up to his waist. He leaned on it lazily, but his eyes were sharp and feral. "A yearly tithe of resources and your ingenious robots as taxes-"

"Extortion!" One of the quorum cried out.

"Taxes." The representative repeated, the growl in his voice raising to a rumble that caused feedback in the quorum chambers' audio system. "Simple taxes, and a handful of your young and able to act as envoys to our great empire-"

"Slaves!" Another of the rabbits shrilled. "Collateral!"

"Really, I expected more of you! I had heard from your neighboring systems that you were a peaceful people, but all these outbursts are more reminiscent of a nation intent on war."

The words hung in a pregnant pause, the last one reverberating like grim spectre.

The quorum had a leader. His name was Shiffel, an elderly rabbit from the southern islands where the mountains were crowned with snow year-round. Shiffel's coat was creamy white, broken only by the black skin of his fingers, nose, and mouth. He rapped on his desk for attention, and the buzzing and muttering of the quorum faded. "The rumors are true. We are a peaceful people. But do _not_mistake our love of peace with an inability to defend ourselves. We have faced invaders before, and yet we still stand on our own."

The tiger at the podium nodded amiably to the elderly rabbit. "That you do. Your resilience in the face of adversity is admirable!" He seemed genuinely pleased that the Rebans were still sovereign.

Shiffel hesitated momentarily. He had expected disagreement--the broad acceptance of his statement was off-putting. "Our global defenses are accurate and instantaneous. Anything approaching without our permission will face certain destruction."

At the front, the tiger nodded enthusiastically. "I have seen your orbital batteries. They are indeed formidable."

The quorum muttered to themselves, but Shiffel knocked for silence again. "Our air forces are robotic and nigh-endless. They can intercept anything that's breached our global defenses and reduce it to ashes before it ever touches the ground."

"I was escorted by a fleet of your aerial drones; they left me with little doubt of the veracity of your claims." The tiger's tail thrashed behind him, and a smile pulled his striped face up until viciously long fangs showed.

Shiffel pressed on, growing angry at the tiger's insistence on being so amenable. "Even if someone were to touch down, all of our worker droids carry software required to serve as an army. Any invaders would face a billion heavily armed and fearless foes."

"Truly an ingenious defense. I'm sure there are none its equal." The tiger's smile hadn't faded. Members of the quorum nervously glanced around the chamber. The tiger had simply accepted their claims at face-value, without argument or boast. If even the representative was agreeing that their defenses were impregnable, then what did the tiger have up his sleeve?

Shiffel's anger showed when he shouted down to the empire's envoy. "Then why do you bother with your demands? You have no way to enforce them!"

"No way? Oh my, I do believe you misunderstood me. Everything you've said is correct. I have even seen some of what you claim first-hand. But, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the Emperor has spoken, and even now, his word is winging his way to your planet."

The assembled rabbits muttered amongst themselves in confusion. "A word? You claim a simple word will defeat us?"

"Oh, there is nothing simple about it, but yes. Right now, falling from a great height towards your planet, is a Word of the Emperor."

*

A hundred miles, and closing fast.

There were glints in the distance--little more than specks so minute that only his suit's sensors could pick them up. They were significant, though, because for the last hundred miles, they'd been tracking him. He didn't need to wonder what was coming next. First, his exosuit reported a burst of heat. Lasers sparkled across his light receptors. A broad range of frequencies, from visible light to high ultra-violet, struck his suit and scattered harmlessly. At the same time that his sensors reported high-velocity rounds incoming, they also reported that they'd been shunted aside by automatic defenses. Lastly, trails of smoke expanded in a zero-g vacuum, quickly growing larger and closer as missiles trundled towards him at a leisurely pace to 'finish the job'.

Razor felt a tinge of pride. The people below had developed such adequate defenses. They were thorough and redundant--exactly what a good defense shield should be. They would be welcome in the Empire. He was so excited to be the one to bring the Emperor's word to them. With an off-handed thought, he triggered his suit's active defenses. He felt a moment of vertigo as he spun from recoil--many of his suit's weapon systems having fired simultaneously. Flame and debris blossomed from seven points on the quickly-approaching horizon. The orbital batteries had fallen.

*

"Please, I will wait for you to confirm. I hardly expect you to take my word for it."

Before the representative had even spoken, scattered Rebans around the room had turned aside to speak into personal communicators. Spreading like a tidal wave, confusion and panic gripped the room. There was whispering that the tiger ignored, choosing instead to simply wait at the podium like a rock jutting up from the battered coastline.

The confusion peaked, as chaotic reports from the upper atmosphere carried only a single piece of useful information.

Shiffel was the one to give it voice. "You sent just one soldier?"

For a moment, the confusion seems to spread even to the representative himself. "What? No. We sent no soldiers. Soldiers in in the empire serve in the army--our most regrettable machine of war. No, but his great eminence did send a word."

The leader of the quorum steepled his fingers. "We have reports of one armed invader falling towards our planet right now. Just one."

"Yes. That is the word."

"One?"

"Yes." The representative's smile didn't fail.

"You think you can invade our planet with a single so-" Shiffel caught himself before he finished the sentence. "Word? A single word?"

"But of course!" The tiger's smile spread ear to ear. "How lucky you are, for a word of the Emperor to be sent! He must hold your people in very high esteem!"

"But there's only one." Shiffel continued incredulously. The tiger just wasn't getting the hint. "You didn't think to send more?"

"More? Whatever do you mean?" If a smile could could kill, the quorum chambers would have been the scene of a mass-murder. "What hubris, to think you'll still exist after the first."

*

Fifty miles up, and the atmosphere hit him like a fist. Until now, everything had been calm and peaceful. Suddenly, when air was added to the mix, the calm tranquility of the fall was shattered. He closed his aural receptors--the wind whistling past made them all but useless. An explosion caught his attention. He was no longer alone.

Clustered around him like a swarm of bees were the second layer of defense. A hundred--no, a thousand of the smooth metal drones shone in the sunlight, moving too quickly and too chaotically for his eyes to track. There was another thump--he'd hit the next layer of the atmosphere. That must have been the queue, because the drones opened up.

There were laser drones and bullet drones. From in the distance, snake-like con trails warned him of incoming missiles. Thicker and thicker the drones clustered, circling like sharks closing for the kill.

Razor liked these little drones. They had a smooth lethality to they way they looked, somehow seeming to be both deadly and comfortable at the same time. It was an aesthetic that pleased him. If, after his sky-fall, any of these people remained, he promised himself he'd have one of them redesign the exterior of his own suit. It would be a pleasing conceit--that they would help improve the very Word that was sent to bring them to heel in the first place.

But, as pleasing as he found the drones, the constant bombardment of their weapons were starting to annoy him. He pushed on a console mounted into one of his wrists, and a sharp flash lit the sky behind him. As if the strings holding the puppets had been cut, as one the drones were silenced and began to fall with him. The aftershocks of the electromagnetic pulse he'd initiated splashed on the upper atmosphere that was quickly receding behind him, leaving an angry purple glow that sank glowing tendrils through the sky around him, like a luminescent jellyfish dangling in the sky.

Forty miles up, and falling fast.

*

"This is insanity! I'm not sure whether to shout or laugh at you!" Shiffel's voice had taken on a shrill note since the news of the droids failure had arrived.

"If you feel you must, please feel free to do either. Or both, if you've a mind to. It really makes no difference to me. You see, since you have rejected my offer, your fate is no longer in my hands. I have failed, and when I return to the empire, I will surely be dishonored and killed." The tiger let a look of regret color his features.

"What happens to you is of no concern to me. What does concern me is that you recall that thing you've dropped into our atmosphere. If you intend to declare war, then do so and be off with you."

"What?" The tiger looked hurt. "We have no reason to declare war. You've done nothing to invoke our ire."

"Then what do you call this?" Shiffel's voice was raw, and he held up a tablet at his desk. On it was a video of Razor, falling through the sky in a cloud of disabled droids, and back-lit by the startling spectre of the weapon he'd fired.

"That." The tiger licked his lips. "I would call that 'enlightenment.'"

The quorum muttered to itself. Right now, while the politicians yammered and sawwed, the military had ordered more squadrons to the sky. Servitor droids clustered on the ground below--taken from their normal tasks and now bearing weapons. Rebus prepared for invasion.

"You know, he is not a soldier. A soldier can feel fear. A soldier can make decisions for himself, and may even disobey orders if he somehow thinks he knows better. A soldier is fallible. The Word, he is the emperor's will incarnate. He will not stop."

"Then we will stop him." Even though his body was soft and pliable, Shiffel's voice was steel. "You seriously can't believe that one person could overthrow an entire world."

"What do I believe? Oh, if only you could know what I know, so you could see why I believe what I believe." The tiger opened his arms, as if welcoming the quorum members into his world. "I believe that we shall see, will we not? You must feel so excited to finally be able to put these elaborate defenses your planet has designed to their ultimate test. Isn't it an amazing day? Today, you will find out if you and your people had prepared enough! What an opportunity!"

*

By now, the ground was clearly in sight. As the atmosphere slowed him to a relatively sedate crawl, he could see shapes down below finally start to define themselves. A tall building, with a pointed tip jutting up towards him. A roto-tilled field with mechanical preciseness, next to a hundred more just like it. A beach so jam packed with dots of color where its inhabitants frolicked that he couldn't pick out any individual one from the eye-watering mess.

This was when he felt most alive--within ten miles of the surface, when his arrival would truly be felt. He anticipated it. He craved it. In just moments, he would have arrived, and the whole of Rebus would finally know the wisdom and mercy of the Emperor. Today was a day to rejoice! He readied his weapon systems and counted down on the altimeter as numbers flashed by.

*

"And what if we don't want our defenses tested?"

Shiffel was chewing his lips. It appeared that the statement had burrowed its way out without his conscious permission, and he regretted it the moment it slipped by.

The tiger at the podium shook his head sadly. "I'm afraid that you haven't signed the agreements. You have refused to pay the tithes. Truly, my hands are tied."

Another member of the quorum, high in the balconies and hidden from the light, shouted, "But what if we were to sign now? Would this stop?"

The statement was met with booing and grumbling, but nowhere near the outrage the representative had heard when he first detailed the conditions of the world's surrender.

"Why, I do believe it might. Though there may be a surcharge--to pay for the costly deployment of the Emperor's Word, which you then refused before you could hear its wisdom." He nodded sadly, but his ever-present smile hadn't left his face.

The quorum shouted and muttered to itself. Then, from not far above, their was the sound of an explosion. It reverberated over the quorum hall and echoed twice before it finally faded. With all the dignity and pride he could muster, Shiffel descended to the podium, an elaborate pen in hand.

*

One mile high, and Razor could finally make out individual objects. It was all rushing towards him so quickly. Half a mile, and the planet of Rebus would finally know his Word.

Then his comms chirped. His mission objectives disappeared. The recall was sounded. With a sigh of soul-deep disappointment, he angled his feet to the ground, and his jets fired. High-gees crushed him into the bottom of his suit, and his downward plunge slowed, then reversed. As he rocketed out of the atmosphere, he was almost in tears.

The true power of the Emperor had been heard. Its diplomats had done their job, and the planet had surrendered. He should be celebrating. Without his threat of violence, the representative would have never been able to close the deal. It was his _job_to get close.

But one of these days, he promised himself. Just once, for the very first time, he wanted to finally touch the ground.